What is the procedure to add domain aliases to an existing linux apache installation?

Question

I have a personal VPS hosted in * and an ubuntu installation. The ubuntu runs apache,php,mysql and is currently being used for 5 websites mapped by virtualhosts. I am writing the whole procedure in case someone needs it.

When I want to add a new domain, I create an 127.0.0.1 test.com *.test.com row in /etc/hosts, add a new file in /etc/apache2/sites-available and run a2ensite test.com - then restart apache. Each website has its own folder in /var/www and the virtualhost entry looks like this :

<Virtualhost *:80>

      # Admin email, Server Name (domain name) and any aliases
      ServerAdmin info@test.com
      ServerName  www.test.com
      ServerAlias test.com *.test.com

      # Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
      DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
      DocumentRoot "/var/www/test.com"
      <Directory /var/www/test.com>
          Options FollowSymLinks
          AllowOverride All
          Order allow,deny
          allow from all
      </Directory>  
</Virtualhost> 

I am planning to add some aliases like aaa.test.com, bbb.test.com, ccc.test.com etc. which will point/forward to different folders. The aaa.test.com one will point to /var/www/aaa/index.php and the bbb.test.com to /var/www/bbb/index.php. To summarize, different aliases - same domain - different folders all in apache. How do I achieve that ?

Answer 1

As aaa.test.com and bbb.test.com should point to different directories, You are required to create separate Virtualhost entries manually. Before that you have to remove the _*.test.com_ from the ServerAlias of test.com Virtualhost entry. Then create a file at /etc/apache2/sites-available , say aaa.test.com and add the following and then save

<Virtualhost *:80>

  ServerName  aaa.test.com
  DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
  DocumentRoot "/var/www/aaa/"

</Virtualhost>

make sure to restart/reload the apache service.

Do the same for bbb.test.com.. That is all you required to do... All d best :)

Answer 2

There can only exist one DocumentRoot per VirtualHost container. Since you have specified different DocumentRoot for each aaa.test.com, bbb.test.com etc, you need to setup a separate VirtualHost for each:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName aaa.test.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/aaa
    DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
    ...
</VirtualHost>

and so on.